Referring to sometimes less-than-ideal finances in her budget speech in April, Western Cape provincial minister of environmental affairs and development planning Tasneem Essop (pictured) remarked: ”What we will certainly offer is leadership, energy, commitment, dedication and passion –and this does not require a budget.”
It is virtually impossible to find anyone in the environmental sector in the Western Cape who will not agree with applying that description to Essop herself.
Her efforts to ”embed” sustainable development into the fabric of Western Cape society over the past two years were capped with the hosting of a conference on provincial sustainability that will become a blueprint for other provinces, and for regional governments in other parts of the world.
With a background in the United Democratic Front and the labour movement, Essop has brought a new dynamism to sustainable development in an area that is recognised as one of the world’s hottest biodiversity hotspots, but which is also notorious for its inequitable social development.
”She takes a big-picture view, but also manages to implement things on a practical level. She has taken an unusual activist role in environmental matters,” says Louis de Villiers, a representative of the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa.
The sustainable development conference in Cape Town last month was an outcome of Essop being appointed co-chair of the international Network for Regional Governments on Sustainable Development earlier this year. It delivered the first sustainable development programme of action at provincial level in South Africa, which will feed into the national strategy on sustainable development approved by the Cabinet in March.
The conference was attended by about 1 000 delegates, including labour, business and regional government representatives from overseas. Its main output was a declaration of intent to provide concrete action plans for sustainable development in the Western Cape over the next 12 months.
The process will be managed by the Western Cape Provincial Development Council, which Essop chairs. Commitments include wide-ranging measures to fast-track land reform, leverage business compliance and provide support for wise resource management among local authorities.
Among the other initiatives she has driven this year are draft guidelines for the development of golf courses and polo fields; an integrated law reform process that will streamline environmental, planning and heritage applications; and an ambitious provincial spatial development framework.
Essop was hoping to finalise the draft spatial development framework at the conference, but the process was delayed because more roadshows are needed to discuss the plan with municipal players.
”The framework is a critical catalyst for transformation at a local level,” she said. ”It is very far-reaching and we need to make sure we get buy-in.”
At the African National Congress’s provincial congress held last month, Essop faced a setback when she was not voted on to the party’s provincial executive council. A challenge she will face in the wake of the sustainable development conference is getting buy-in from powerful development interests with connections to the Western Cape’s new political heavyweights.